My daughter, my eldest son, and I watch a show on Spike TV called Ink Master. A group of tattoo artists work on a tattoo each week and one of the artists is sent home by the judges (a lot like cooking contests). A winner is named at the end of the series. I am not writing about tattoos. What caught my attention was something that was said to the contestants each week. When the contestants were introduced to the people who had volunteered to receive tattoos, they were told "meet your canvases."

"Meet your canvases." Doesn't that sound like our students in Karate? Tattoos are pretty permanent, and so is what we teach our students. Actually, bad tattoos can be removed with great difficultly or covered by a better tattoo -- there is actually another show on Spike TV for that called Tattoo Nightmares.

As permanent as tattoos may be, what we teach our students -- for good or bad -- is more permanent. The techniques, strategies, attitudes, courtesies, and feelings we teach our students about Karate will last a lifetime. And unfortunately, our mistakes, like bad tattoos, are very difficult to remove.

Our students are our canvases. What a great responsibility we have to create masterpieces.

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"Karate Jutsu" means "China Hand art". Karate came to Okinawa from China.
Only in the 1930s or so, was the term "Karate" changed to mean "Empty Hand".
"China Hand" was used in Hawaii until after World War II, and is still used in some dojo.